Satellite communications notably involve the transmission of signals from a station on earth towards a satellite and vice versa. Satellite communications may be intended for providing communication services between two points on earth. This includes point-to-point services (e.g. internet, satellite phones) and point-to-multipoint (broadcast) services (e.g. TV). The stations engaged in satellite communications may be fixed (e.g. rooftop dish) or mobile (e.g. vehicles, ships, planes, hand-held devices). With the increase use of satellite and terrestrial communications, the risk of interferences between different communications also increases.
In the past, there have been numerous efforts to locate interfering transmission stations and, more generally, there have been numerous efforts to resolve interference issues and to alleviate the disruptions caused thereby (including reduction of the usable capacity of a satellite communication system).
A known approach to locate an interfering transmission station on earth is to use ground stations. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,679 relates to a method of locating an unknown radio-frequency transmitter using correlations between signals received by different satellites. However, performing ground-based geolocation is difficult because it relies on signal correlation between multiple satellites and multiple ground stations: a time intensive process with many opportunities for error propagation within the calculation. Furthermore, the ability to perform ground-based geolocation is dependent on many factors, including the existence of and extensive knowledge of adjacent satellites, the existence of and extensive knowledge of known reference signals, and the existence of necessary ground hardware, and as a result, ground-based geolocation is ineffective in many cases.
Another known approach uses helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for geolocation. However, this approach is resource inefficient and only offers one-off analyses.
In view of the above, there is a need to reduce the amount of interference in the context of satellite communications or, when this is not possible, to adopt techniques to cope with such interferences.